


your eyes would start to flood (if you knew the kind of steel running through my royal blood)

by possibilist



Series: Fool's Gold Carmilla HSAU Deleted Scenes [2]
Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, F/F, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-07
Updated: 2015-01-07
Packaged: 2018-03-06 12:58:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3135332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/possibilist/pseuds/possibilist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You’re in Laura’s t-shirt, because you were too hurt to not allow yourself some softness, although it makes you feel sick now. Or maybe it’s just you—the bruises that you know have bloomed underneath your pale skin."</p><p>a few deleted scenes to write for you guys from chapter 9 of fool's gold, so here you are. according to bianca, the theme was "gross hollstein being sad & pining for each other" so that's basically what you get here. carmilla's & laura's POVs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	your eyes would start to flood (if you knew the kind of steel running through my royal blood)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [whatsthedamage](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatsthedamage/gifts).



> i'm going to say the same trigger warnings p much apply here, although nothing is graphic, but: implications of child abuse, physical & emotional abuse.

**your eyes would start to flood (if you knew the kind of steel running through my royal blood)**

.

_all the things you never show/ you know you could be mistaking me for somebody else/ all the roses you could send to me/ could sit on my shelf/ & my chain is feeling heavy on my neck/ but my heart is beating steady & i know it never lies/ call me brave, call me bright/ messing up, it’s only right_  
—MADE IN HEIGHTS, ‘all the places’

//

You have an hour before Mother gets home, and you’ve been in bed all day and you know she’ll at least expect you to have moved, even if you know she let you stay home today.

So you take your practiced gentle, deep inhale—seven counts—the exhale—eight—despite the pinching in your chest, and then swing your legs over the side of your bed as gently as you can. You’ve done this countless times, and sometimes it’s almost disorienting because it still hurts exactly the same. Today, at least, nothing is wrong with your hips; you’d not wrenched them in your fall down the stairs, so that’s a plus.

You groan a little—no one is home yet, so it’s okay—as you push yourself up with your arms, because your stomach aches and your vision gets a little spotty as you get to your feet, but you ride it out, stay focused on your hand pressing down on your nightstand. 

You’re in your underwear and Laura’s t-shirt, because you were too hurt to not allow yourself some softness, although it makes you feel sick now. Or maybe it’s just  _you_ —the bruises that you know have bloomed underneath your pale skin.

You make your way to your bathroom, shakily, pausing once to steady yourself against your desk, and you turn the shower on without bothering with the lights. You would run a bath, but you’re afraid that you wouldn’t be able to climb back out of the tub—you have a ridiculously large, freestanding, claw-footed one and a stand-alone shower, so really, you’re already standing, and you can at least manage for a few more minutes, you’re sure. You debate doing the entire thing with the lights off—you have plenty of times before—but you probably need to see how bad things are; you  _deserve_ to see how bad things are. 

You deserve to see your body as it is rather than imagine Laura loving it.

You flip on the light switch and don’t bother to look in the mirror, only painfully—it takes a while—get the t-shirt over your head and tug your underwear down. You focus on the row of perfume on a shelf above your sink—Mother got you them for birthdays and other holidays, even though you only wear  _one_ , just because, you guess, it seemed nice to her.

The shower is warm enough by now so you open the door and step inside, step under the spray. You really should shampoo  your hair but you’re pretty sure lifting and moving your arms to that degree is kind of a lost cause, so you just stand there for a while with your eyes closed, then, after a while, grab your favorite bar of soap and stare down at yourself.

You’ve always been short and thin; for as long as you can remember, you were pretty much the smallest kid in your class. Mother seems to love this about you, because you don’t take up too much space, because you’re beautiful. 

Your hips press out against your skin and your ribs are pale ridges soaked with blooms that are anything but a garden.

For a moment, you know, when you’d first gotten in, the water had run sick, sweet red with your blood, but now there’s only a bereft garden, and nothing about it, really, is going to reach toward any kind of light.

You want to, god—you do; you want Laura’s soft hands and her caring smile and the tickle of her soft hair.

It makes your head spin, and you can’t breathe too well. You put a hand on the tiled wall to steady yourself, and you concentrate on the exact blue of the bruise on your ribs. You can’t name it, but it’s something like the core of yourself.

You’re so small, you know this, and you think maybe this bloom—your body being so scared to reach outside of itself, never breaking but broken nonetheless—is why you’ve never really gotten to grow up.

//

You get home that afternoon with a terrible headache and a bunch of math homework, neither of which are improved by the fact that Carmilla has ignored you for a day and a half now.

Which is your fault, basically, you’re pretty sure—she’s always been private, always been closed off, and  _finally_ you were getting beneath all of that; she’d texted you about all kinds of things: books she loved that she didn’t tell anyone else about; the prettiest sunrise she’d seen (on the seaside, apparently, when she was twelve, in the winter); how she loved philosophy but wondered about why anyone would be so concerned about defining love.

She’d told you that you were brave.

You’re already distracted and you grab a small handful of raisins and try to focus on your math, but you’re exhausted—you’d cried a lot more than you’d like to admit after your fight with Carmilla, after you’re sure you dad had gone to sleep—and you feel so sad you’re kind of sick.

Plus you have absolutely  _no_ idea what’s going on in math, probably because you don’t like it but also because Carmilla is actually a really good tutor, and you just really can’t focus.

Plus, your homework isn’t actually due until Friday, so you don’t actually have to do it today.

You sit down on your bed and take  _The Glass Castle_ off your nightstand—Carmilla had mentioned it offhandedly one day in a text, and you figured maybe you’d like it—but before you know it, you’re crying a little, because you didn’t  _mean_ to fight with her and you’d just wanted to give her a plate of cookies, and sometimes it just feels like you can’t do anything well enough: your math; being a good friend; play your new piece on the flute without going sharp at least four times. Sometimes you want to take up less space so that no one will notice.

Before you know it, you’re waking up, your nose stuffy, your cheeks stiff with salty remnants. It’s dark outside and you’d fallen asleep, the book next to you.

**Laura (6:47 pm):** _Hey, I started a book you talked about, it’s pretty good so maybe do you think you’d want to talk about when I’m finished._

**Laura (7:02 pm):** _Or not_

**Laura (7:03 pm):** _that’s okay too_

//

**Laura (10:56 pm):** _Sweet dreams, carm <3_

_//_

You wait until you’re sure Mother and Will are gone for a few hours—you sleep with nightmares, so it’s discontinuous until about noon—before you get out of bed and steel yourself, then make your way downstairs. You’d had some soup last night that Mother made you, but you’re  _really_ hungry, and you see she’s left out some takeout from one of your favorite places here: a gourmet turkey sub and homemade barbecue chips.

But you  _really_ don’t want that—it makes you feel so sick—but you’re also tired, and the quiet of the house is making you feel antsy. You walk to the living room and turn the TV on;  _Fishtank Kings_ is, thankfully, on all day, so you sit with a sigh and watch haphazardly for a few minutes—your head  _hurts,_ and you can’t concentrate too well, but you don’t really have any other signs of a concussion, so you’re not that worried—before wrapping up in the big soft blanket on the couch and finding a box of macaroni and cheese in the pantry. You throw away the sandwich Mother got you along with most of the chips, clenching your jaw because you have to hide them underneath a bunch of other stuff in the trashcan—you can’t risk it, not right now—before you boil some water and pour the noodles in. You add butter and the packet of fake cheese, poke your arm out of your warm, soft cocoon—your only comfort these past two days; you still haven’t taken anything for the pain—and stir everything until it’s done. You debate getting a bowl down, but that would require you to reach up kind of far, because Mother and Will are both significantly taller than you, and Mother is the one who designed your kitchen, so you just sort of shrug and wait a few minutes before you get a fork and an oven mitt and shuffle back to the couch.

It doesn’t taste quiet right, and that’s when you realize you just  _really_ want a crunch wrap, and so you think for a minute and then put the pot down on the coffee table and go grab a few tortilla chips from the pantry and then crumble them in the pot when you get back to the couch.

It’s nowhere near the same, but it’s a little closer, and you eat close to the whole thing before you set it down on the table again. You curl up—it takes some shifting, because not much is comfortable right now, because your whole face just hurts like a bitch—before you take out your phone. You’d thought about maybe distracting yourself with reading, because  _V for Vendetta_ is on the chair close by, and it’s one of your favorites, especially on days like today, but you know you won’t even really be able to read; everything is a little blurrier than normal, even if you could concentrate well on something. 

You open the app to your Facebook—which you only have because Laura basically made for you, because you really don’t care at all, and your chest hurts in a completely different kind of way when you look at your profile picture, which is a photo of Laura smiling like she’s about to light up the entire world, and you’re scowling—LaFontaine had taken it at lunch one day—and then type Laura’s name into your search bar. She’s one of, like, seven friends you have, so it comes up right away, and you check to see if she’s posted anything.

For some reason you’re incredibly relieved when you see that she hasn’t, and you check her Instagram—that one’s easy, because you only follow her, so it’s just a click—and there are no new pictures either. The last one she posted is you smiling, or laughing, maybe, even, looking down at something, and you don’t even remember when she’d taken it, but she’d put a black and white filter on it with the caption  _See! She really does smile! (And it’s lovely! :)) #wcw #mybestfriendisprettierthanyours_ , and when you look down at your hands they don’t seem like they could belong to that girl in that picture. Your body is not her body.

You feel tears building but you don’t deserve to get to cry, not at all, and so you grab the rest of the macaroni and cheese in the pot and dig around with your spoon to find one last little chip, but there aren’t any left, and your eyes sting, and what a  _dumb_ thing to make you break, so you sniffle and put the pot down, then flop down on the couch.

It hurts, like, a lot, and you breathe through it and then turn toward whatever idiotic fishtank drama is happening on the television.

You stay awake for a little while and hear:  _At the ocean’s deepest point, the water pressure is like carrying fifty jumbo jets on your shoulders._

You sniffle again as you’re about to fall asleep, because—yeah, you get that. Your spine hasn’t been sure for years; you haven’t really been able to stand up straight for a long time.

//

You really are happy to be at the track meet—it’s actually a nice day, a little cooler, starting to just be a small bit like fall, which is great, because you really like fall clothes. 

And you love supporting your friends, especially Danny, because she’s really, really awesome, and you’ll admit it, all of the Zetas look great too.

Nothing is really as great as Carmilla, though—no one is as attractive at an aesthetic level, and you wish she was here with you too. You’re absolutely sure she’d be complaining the entire time, pouting and rolling her eyes and probably still really hot in all of that black. 

You wonder if she sweats, because she always smells so good, and her skin is always so soft, and she has, like, no acne  _at all_ , all of which just isn’t fair at all. You know she’d be annoying and kind of mean, probably, but you’re also pretty sure she’d smile at Danny winning and  _maybe_ even at Will looking so nice.

You’re also sure she’d grin at you, and hold your hand, which you really,  _really_ like. You've never had someone do it before, but you’re pretty sure Carmilla is still the best at it, because her hands are so soft and they’re not too big for yours, and you’ve found that she has one little callus on the middle finger of her left hand—where her pen rests—and her right pinky is kind of bent at a funny angle at the middle knuckle, because she’d told you she’d broken it playing basketball in middle school and it’d just healed a little weird. Her wrists were really nice, too, gentle and you know she put perfume on them. It’s kind of sweet, you think, and a little unexpected, for some reason, that Carmilla wears perfume, because she does wear a lot of ripped black skinny jeans and fraying punk rock t-shirts, heavy boots. 

She’s definitely the most beautiful person you’ve known though, and you’re sure she wouldn’t completely hate it here.

Unless, maybe she would, because you’d done  _something_ wrong, because she hasn’t talked to you at  _all_ in the past two days.

You’re pulled from your thoughts by a lot of cheering, and it’s, like,  _really_ loud and the sun is  _really_ bright when you stand up to join in, and then you notice Danny has won, and you really are quite happy, so you clap and shout a little as loud as you can.

When you get home that night you tell your dad that Danny won, that your school won the whole meet too, which is great, and when he asks about Carmilla, you just frown and shrug. “I know it was my fault,” you say, “because I did something she had  _said_ to not do, but I’m still—I miss her.”

Your dad hugs you to his side gently and kisses the top of your head. “You know, kiddo, you’re allowed to be a human being and mess up sometimes. You’ve apologized, and maybe Carmilla just needs a little time. But, Laura, you’re a  _really_ good friend, okay?”

You sniffle and press your face to his chest. He stands like that for a while, rubbing little circles on your back. “You’re a really good dad, too,” you say, mumbling into his shirt.

He laughs and then says, “Well, yeah, I have to live up to all of the World’s Best Dad mugs you give me.”

You roll your eyes but you smile, and he says, “Well, there are leftovers from yesterday, if you’re hungry.”

“I ate at the meet,” you say, and he nods.

“Want to watch Dr. Who?” he asks. “Unless you’ve not finished your homework.”

“I’ve finished my homework, Dad.”

He says, “That’s my girl,” and you’re really glad you are.

//

You can’t really miss another day of school, because you miss a lot each year anyway, and the swelling around your eyes has gone down, and only one of them really has a bruise that you can’t cover up well, and you can get around okay.

But, still, you wake up an hour earlier than normal, because you still move kind of slowly in the mornings—you’re still pretty stiff—and try to turn on the radio, the station Perry and LaFontaine are always listening to, because there’s a lot of ridiculous music that no one knows makes you laugh a lot of the time, but none of it helps this morning, and you end up getting in the shower after you’ve put on Daughter, and you’re able to finally wash your hair. It’s tangled and getting long, so it takes you longer, but you eventually finish and dry off gently—the entire day is going to ache a lot, so a little softness now is okay, you think—and then tug on a pair of jeans and one of your softest, and you put on a sports bra, because your normal ones pinch too hard against your ribs—and plus, no one is going to see your bra today anyway. You shrug into one of your softest, oldest black t-shirts—at least, that Mother’s let you keep—and you put on your secret favorite rainbow striped socks.

Your makeup takes you an hour, and you still can’t quite get the bruise around your right eye covered sufficiently for it to not show up at all, so you figure you’ll settle for sunglasses again and just use your bangs in class. It’s not like you normally talk or look up anyway, and thankfully, you don’t have Health today, so you won’t see Laura until lunch.

You’re excited to see her, which you don’t want to think about, but you put on eyeliner and mascara and perfume anyway. You grab your headphones and shove on your boots, then trudge down the stairs. Mother smiles from the table where she’s drinking her coffee and reading the paper when she sees you. “You look nice today, darling,” she says, “although I wish you’d not wear that shirt anymore.”

You make the mistake of shrugging, and you try not to wince at all, because you don’t want to have to stay home again, and you say, “Just for today, please?”

She stands while you’re putting books into your bag and touches your shoulder, which you try your very  _hardest_ to not flinch away from, and says, “Okay, sweetheart.”

You nod. “Thanks, Mother.”

“Of course.”

You grab a granola bar to eat on the way to school—she’s driving you today—and she frowns when you fully sees your eye when you absentmindedly brush your bangs back.

“I tried,” you say, “and—my bangs, and I brought sunglasses.”

She sighs. “Fine. You shouldn’t miss any more days now anyway.”

“Yeah,” you say.

You sit in the car and look out the window, and your whole body hurts whenever the road is even a little bit uneven. You think of Laura, think of Daughter’s  _you’ve got a warm heart, you’ve got a beautiful brain_ , and you wonder what in the world she sees that’s the least bit redeeming about you.

Something, you know, though,  _something_.

“Have a great day, Carmilla,” Mother says once she’s parked in the lot in front of the Administration building. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” you say, and you turn to make your way to philosophy, and she is not the person you want to utter those sacred nuances to, and the words sting as they tumble around inside of your mouth.

**Author's Note:**

> go check out fool's gold & track [#carmilla hsau] on tumblr for general updates. chaps are released every tuesday & thursday from 5-6 est.]


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